President Trump Delivers On His Judicial Promise

A piece from BuzzFeed yesterday highlighted that President Trump is delivering on his promises to appoint conservatives to serve on the federal bench. The article, titled “Trump Is Winning On Judges” explored how the judges the President is appointing will have a significant impact for decades to come:

But amid the chaos, the Trump administration is steadily making progress on a campaign promise that will outlast this administration for decades: the confirmation of federal judges to lifetime positions on the bench. Trump wooed wary Republicans last year with pledges to appoint conservative judges. His administration so far has delivered.

The White House has announced more than two dozen lower court nominees to date, and the Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding hearings and sending nominees to the full Senate for a vote at a regular clip.

Starting with Justice Gorsuch, who President Trump selected to replace Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court, the President has continued to look fill judicial vacancies with individuals that have a record of conservative jurisprudence and a commitment to following the Constitution. On top of that, the President’s nominees have continued to advance through the Senate with the help of outside groups on the right that are very well-organized:

There’s also the fact that Republicans historically have been more organized on judges than Democrats, said David Fontana, a professor at George Washington University Law School who follows judicial nominations. There are numerous interest groups and political factions around issues like health care, he said, but there is a tight-knit community of conservative lawyers who foster and promote court nominees during Republican administrations.

That fact, combined with the deference shown to home state senators, meant that there was already a pipeline of candidates for the Trump White House to consider as soon as he took office, Fontana said. He posited that some of Trump’s judicial nominees, such as Newsom, would have been nominated even if Sen. Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush had won the election.

While Senate Democrats continue to try and use every tool in the book to obstruct some of the President’s highly-qualified nominees, including the blue-slip provision, the President has still been able to keep his word and by putting well-credentialed conservatives on the federal bench.